A Geographical Tour of Thomas Hardy's Wessex Quiz

Answer: Lyme Bay

Lyme Bay stretches in a wide arc from the Isle of Portland in the east to Start Point on the south Devon coast and, in addition to being the home of Chesil Beach, also known as Chesil Bank, the bay is also home to a large part of the phenomenal Jurassic Coast, a stretch of coastline of worldwide scientific interest and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Many ships have fallen foul of the treacherous currents and often atrocious weather in this area and it is estimated that there are well over two hundred wrecks along this stretch of coast; wrecking here became so rife that laws were passed in the middle of the 18th century that made the acts of wrecking and plundering punishable by death.

It made little to no difference whatsoever. Hardy called this area Deadmans Bay for good reason; it is sobering to think that the 'dead house', the building in which the dead bodies of the victims of many shipwrecks were housed, still exists in Chesil Cove on the Isle of Portland.

Answer: Isle of Slingers

Many of you may be familiar with the name Portland through its use as a maritime area, heard as part of the shipping forecast that is broadcast daily by the BBC over the wireless; others will be familiar with it through the use of its wonderful limestone, famed as a building material not only in England but across the world, St Paul's Cathedral and the Cenotaph in London being two examples of such buildings. Hardy gave the island this name, the Isle of Slingers, in recognition of the Portlander's stone throwing abilities in their defence of their island and used it as the scene for much of his 1897 novel, 'The Well-Beloved'. Portlanders don't throw many stones these days, except for maybe those occasions when Kimberlin's, like this author, travel over to drink their beer on a Saturday night!

Answer: Salisbury Plain

Salisbury Plain is an area of poor quality farmland but what it lacks in nutrient it more than compensates for with its archaeology. Salisbury Plain is the site of Stonehenge, a mysterious Neolithic construction believed to date from between four and five thousand years ago and the site of religious activity for the people of the area and, more recently, was featured in the news for a number of years after confrontations between neo-Druids and the civil authorities. In 1986, Stonehenge in addition to Avebury Henge to the north, were granted UNESCO World Heritage status and Scheduled Ancient Monument status. Salisbury Plain, as a military training area, has also become a haven for native wildlife with many uncommon species plants, birds and insects benefitting directly from the lack of access granted to the public. Hardy's Great Plain, or Great Mid-Wessex Plain as it was sometimes referred to, features in his 1896 poem 'Wessex Heights';

"I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there's a figure against the
moon,
Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune;
I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now
passed
For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast".

Answer: Dorchester

The proof of Dorchester's importance to the early history of this area of the Frome valley can be found just a few miles south of the town. There have been settlements in and around what is now Dorchester since prehistoric times and the hill fort known as Maiden Castle is the most prominent of these; the fort being a concentric series of deep ditches and embankments covers an area of around forty-seven acres making it certainly the largest hill fort in Britain and possibly the largest in Europe. During the 17th century Dorchester was the location of the trials in 1685 that have become known as the 'Bloody Assizes' in which Judge George Jeffreys tried around three hundred men who took part in the failed uprising led by the Duke of Monmouth and executed many of them.

The hotel in Dorchester in which the trials took place can still be stayed in and certainly has a certain 'air' about it even today. Hardy's setting for his novel 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' was based on Dorchester, and tells the story of the rise of a common farmhand to a position of wealth and power after selling his wife and daughter whilst in a drunken stupor and of his eventual fall from grace. Near the Dorset village of Portesham, perched high on a hill known as Black Down stands the Hardy Monument.

Many visitors to the area confuse the monument believing it to be in memory of Thomas Hardy; it is, in fact, a monument to another Thomas Hardy, Vice Admiral Thomas Hardy, the officer standing on deck with Admiral Nelson when he was shot and who is the Hardy of 'Kiss me, Hardy' fame.

Answer: Frome River Valley

'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' can truly be said to be the novel that encompasses all of Dorset, from Salisbury in the north to Dorchester in the south, from Beaminster in the west across the county to the New Forest in the east. The Vale of the Great Dairies, as Hardy called it, is actually that beautiful area of lush, green farmland that lies in the shallow valley formed by the River Frome; one of Dorset's principal rivers. To the north of this valley lies an area that was known to Hardy as the Vale of the Little Dairies; this area of outstanding natural beauty, or AONB, is known by its proper name of the Vale of Blackmoor/Blackmore and is part of the Stour River Valley system.

It was here that Hardy's Tess Durbeyfield suffered the first of a series of misfortunes at the hands of Alec D'Urberville, the beginning of the end for Tess and her life of tragedy.

Interestingly, the family upon which Hardy's D'Urbervilles were based, local aristocrats of centuries before, the Turberville family have their family crest and tomb situated in St. John the Baptist church in the village of Bere Regis, just a few miles from the town of Wareham.

This powerful dynasty played a major role in the affairs of this area of Dorset between the 13th and 18th centuries, but the family had died out and disappeared completely by 1780, a full hundred years or so before Hardy wrote this novel... No fear of being sued for slandering an ancient and aristocratic family!

Answer: Budmouth

The seaside resort of Weymouth, or Budmouth to give it Hardy's Wessex name, lies equidistant between both the Isle of Slingers and the town of Casterbridge. During his reign, King George III spent fourteen summer holidays in the town at the sumptuous residence built there, the Gloucester Lodge, by his brother the Duke of Gloucester, and which still exists, standing on Weymouth's impressive Georgian seafront.

As visitors approach Weymouth from the east, a large representation of the king riding on horseback can be seen. Carved into the side of a chalk hill as a tribute to the king, the work was erroneously carried out and this error resulted in the king being pictured facing away from the town. Local legend tells of the king's displeasure at being portrayed as turning his back on Weymouth and never visited the resort again.

It was at Budmouth that Hardy's character, Sergeant Troy, visited a horse racing meeting here in the novel 'Far From the Madding Crowd' and the town was also the home of Eustacia Vye, a character from Hardy's 1878 novel 'The Return of the Native'.

Answer: Winchester

The ancient city of Winchester, once the capital city of all of England is now the county town of Hampshire, the ninth largest county by land area in England. There are many things to interest many people in this city. Winchester Cathedral which possesses the longest medieval nave in all of Europe; here at Winchester Cathedral can be found the burial place of the novelist Jane Austen and a number of ancient English kings.

The Winchester Bible, a huge 12th century tome, is regarded as the finest of the few bibles of this period that still exist.

At the Hospital of St Cross, travellers can still be served with the 'Wayfarer's Dole' which consists of a beaker of ale and a morsel of bread, a meal that this old medieval almshouse has offered to travellers and pilgrims since its foundation in 1136. Hardy is not the only author to have been inspired by or to have featured Winchester in their works; Jane Austen was enamoured of Winchester and John Keats was inspired by and wrote his ode 'To Autumn' whilst living there.

The Saxon monk and poet Wulfstan, who lived and studied at Winchester, penned his extensive poem about St Swithun here... a poem longer than the epic 'Beowulf'!

Answer: False

The village of Stinsford encompasses the parishes of Lower and Higher Bockhampton, the latter being the place of Hardy's birth in 1840. Although most of Hardy's remains lie buried at Westminster Abbey, against his wishes it must be said, his heart belonged to Dorset and this is where it was buried; next to the grave of his first wife Emma in the churchyard of St. Michael's Church, Stinsford. Hardy gave Stinsford the Wessex name of Mellstock and it was here that Hardy set his first novel, written in 1872, 'Under the Greenwood Tree'. Tintinhull, its proper name, is a village located near Ilchester in Somerset which stands on the Fosse Way which is an ancient Roman road linking the city of Exeter in Devon with the city of Lincoln. Tintinhull is mentioned by Hardy in his poem 'Vagg Hollow', written about an area of marshland near Ilchester;

"And the wind out by Tintinhull waking;
I hear in it father's call
As he called when I saw him dying,
And he sat by the fire last Fall,
And mother stood by sighing;
But I'm not afraid at all!"

Answer: Wantage

Many people today would not consider the town of Wantage to be a part of Wessex, but Hardy also included Oxford, to which he gave the Wessex name of Christminster. Wantage was the birthplace of Alfred the Great, the only English king to have been granted such an epithet; Alfred was not only a great king but also a man of the arts and learning but, by some accounts, a poor baker possessing a short attention span! It was whilst Alfred had taken shelter in Somerset that he allowed his hostesses breads to burn... allegedly! Until political boundary changes which came into effect during 1974, Wantage was located in the county of Royal Berkshire, but found itself falling within the county of Oxford afterwards.

In 1979 Wantage was twinned with the German town of Seesen which is located, most appropriately, in the region of Lower Saxony.

In Hardy's 1895 novel 'Jude the Obscure', the eponymous Jude Fawley becomes apprentice to a stonemason in Wantage, or Alfredston, and lives in the town during his short-lived marriage to his nemesis Arabella Donn.

This was the last novel that Hardy wrote; a public outcry at his treatment of the subject matter disillusioned Hardy and from this date onward he concentrated his efforts on his poetry.

Answer: The New Forest

The New Forest is one of the few remaining areas of one of the oldest and most extensive forests in Europe. It was once said that during prehistoric times, when the British Isles were covered in dense forest like that which remains today, a squirrel could travel from the north of Scotland to England's southern coast without touching the ground. The New Forest, very much like Salisbury Plain some miles to its north, is an area rich in ancient archaeology, the park area containing over two hundred round barrows and well over one hundred ancient monuments. The New Forest was first claimed as a hunting estate by William I shortly after his conquest of Saxon England in around 1080. The New Forest National Park was established on the 1st of March 2005 to protect this area from further development; the park is a haven for many unique habitats and a number of rare species of birds including the Nightjar, the Great Grey Shrike and the Hen Harrier and is a refuge for Britain's only poisonous reptile, the Adder or Viper. The New Forest is mentioned by Hardy in his poem 'A Trampwoman's Tragedy';

"For months we had padded side by side,
Ay, side by side
Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,
and where the Parret ran.
We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,
had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,
been stung by every Marshwood midge,
I and my fancy-man".